by Jason Taylor
Ava nodded. “The plan sounds good. Make it so.” Then, turning to the other clones, “I think we should get some sleep. Tomorrow is going to be a big day.”
Chapter 39
Jillian spent a full day on duty without catching any hints that the clones were onboard. She started to wonder if Ike had placed her and Trace on a different submarine for a reason he had chosen not to share with them.
Her duty hours were occupied creating a navigational plan to take them from their patrol location, several hundred miles west of Vancouver Island in the North Pacific, through the Strait of Juan de Fuca, into Puget Sound near Seattle. She was responsible for choosing their depth in each section of ocean to take advantage of tidal currents for maximum speed and temperature layers for maximum stealth. She bent herself juggling the variables necessary to solve the navigational problem. When she was done she stood up, bleary-eyed, and headed for her bunk desperate for some rest. By the time she laid down, the sub was just outside the entrance to the Strait, roughly north of Neah Bay, with a 2 a.m. estimated arrival at their destination.
At 1 a.m., after a meager three hours of sleep, Jillian was roused from her bunk by a strikingly beautiful officer. She had cat-like, blue eyes framed by a thick mane of blonde hair, which she had braided and tied behind her head in an efficient plait.
“Get up and come with me,” the officer said.
Jillian, feeling sleep-addled, slid out of bed and changed into her uniform as the officer watched. Jillian noticed that Trace was up as well. He was standing by the door, and looked just as bleary-eyed, tired and confused as she felt.
“Hurry, we must be moving,” the officer snapped, then turned briskly and walked out of the compartment into the corridor.
Jillian and Trace shared a glance then hurried to catch up, following the officer to where she stopped by a forward exit-hatch ladder. A multitude of stars were visible through the hatch above, swinging in small, erratic arcs as the sub rolled in a gentle swell. Jillian noticed that the low hum that she’d associated with the sub moving under power was absent, everything was currently quiet and hushed.
The officer climbed the ladder up to the top deck, indicating that they should follow. Once on deck, Jillian could see the lights of Seattle off their starboard side. They had clearly reached their destination, but why she’d been roused from her bunk, she had no idea.
“Are these the only ones you want to take with you?” a man asked.
Jillian turned toward the voice and recognized Captain Walsh. He was standing aft speaking with the officer who’d woken them, surrounded by three other women in officer’s uniforms.
“Yes, these two will do,” the officer said.
“Elizabeth, why do you want to bring them with us? The four of us are sufficient,” one of the other officers asked. She had straight-cut black hair and looked incredibly fit.
“Suki, I think we’ll find them useful to us before this is over.”
Suki looked from Elizabeth to one of the other officers, shrugged her shoulders and stayed quiet.
Jillian was shocked by the realization that she was now in the presence of the clones. Somehow they had transferred themselves into new, adult bodies. She had experienced the destruction they were capable of, she would not make the mistake of underestimating them again. A low, humming anxiety took up residence in her gut. She shot a glance at Trace to see the same realization and fear evident in him.
“You two, with me,” Elizabeth said, stepping from the sub to a fast rigid inflatable boat floating alongside.
Jillian and Trace followed Elizabeth onto the inflatable, the other clones sliding in behind them. After a few more words with the Captain, they pushed themselves away from the sub, setting themselves adrift as the massive bulk of the nuclear submarine sank without a trace into the inky, black water.
Jillian couldn’t understand why they’d been taken off the sub to sit in this inflatable in the middle of the Puget Sound. Had they been chosen because they were working with Ike? She couldn’t imagine how the clones would know that, but the fact that she and Trace were both here couldn’t be a coincidence. She wondered if they were here to be killed. But if that was the plan, she didn’t know why they weren’t already dead.
She screwed up her courage and turned to Elizabeth. “Why are we out here? What happens next?”
It was a long time before she spoke. “Now,” Elizabeth said, immobile, facing the lights of Seattle, “we wait.”
Jillian was trying to make sense of what was happening to her, but her mind was running in circles, stuck in ruts formed by exhaustion and shock. Instead, she found herself mesmerized by the glinting reflections of city lights on the water, her vision wandering in and out of focus. Each light sparkled and shifted, hooking onto tiny wavelets, elongating and shrinking, forming a fragmented, distorted, mirror-image version of the Seattle skyline. It was beyond beautiful.
They sat that way, in silence for hours, the RIB bobbing gently on the small waves, Jillian lost in her thoughts, the clones as rigid and immobile as statues, Trace curled up, wedged into a corner of the RIB, quietly snoring.
Gradually, almost too slow to perceive, the sky behind the city lightened. The arrival of the sun revealed itself in blues and purples, the city lights fading as the sky gained luminosity. The air shifted from black to grey as the sky paled to blue. Then a smear of clouds on the eastern horizon flared to orange over the silhouette of the Cascade Mountains, the peaks sharp enough to cut.
The sun was up.
“It’s time, June,” Elizabeth said.
Jillian realized that June was the tall, willowy one. Brown hair, brown skin, surprisingly blue, impressively intelligent eyes.
None of the clones moved. They all waited for June. She nodded. “Yes, it’s time. Suki take us in.”
Suki started the motor and pinned the throttle. The RIB accelerated up onto its bow wave, settling into a fast plane as they arced across the Sound toward the marina at the foot of the city.
Jillian planted her feet on the rubberized floor, leaning into the wind as she sat lightly on the inflated hull of the boat, her hands grabbing lines fore and aft, her knees absorbing the shock of each hit as they bounced through the waves.
As they got closer to shore, Jillian noticed a fishing boat driving in circles several hundred feet off the marina breakwater. There was something large splashing in the water behind it.
Elizabeth saw it too. “Suki, over there,” she said, pointing her chin in the direction of the other boat.
As they moved closer, Jillian could see that the splashes were being made by a man in the water. His efforts were slowing as the cold seeped into his muscles; he was clearly struggling to stay afloat.
“Help! Help!” he called out. “Over here! Help!”
When they were about twenty feet away, Elizabeth held up a hand. “Stop here.”
The man swam toward them, but his efforts were feeble, his head barely above the water.
“Help!” he tried yelling again, but his voice was cut off as a wave submerged him.
Elizabeth turned to Jillian. “What should we do?” she asked.
“What?!” Jillian asked, startled.
“Should we save him, or should we continue our mission?” Elizabeth asked.
Jillian was about to say that they should save him, of course, but she paused. Ike had told them that he had changed simulation parameters to increase the death rate. They were supposed to be helping Ike with that project. Maybe this was a part of what he was doing?
The man’s struggles were coming to a close, his mouth under the water more often than above. He no longer had the strength to call out. All Jillian could see were his eyes staring into hers, unblinking, begging her for his life.
“We have to save him,” she said, suddenly aware that she could make no other decision. Her heart reached out to the drowning man. His was just one life out of millions, but there was no way she could stand by and watch as he died in front of her.
After the rescue, Suki drove the RIB past the breakwater and to the marina’s dinghy dock. Elizabeth and June jumped expertly onto the pier and within seconds they were tied securely alongside. Ava jumped up next, and then Suki lifted the still shivering man out of the boat and onto dry land.
“What should we do with him?” Suki asked.
“We will take him to the harbormaster’s office and leave him there. They will find him and warm him soon enough,” Ava said. Her hair shone like burnished copper in the morning light.
The clones walked up the dock without bothering to see if Jillian and Trace would follow. Suki was carrying the man over her shoulder, unconscious.
Jillian scrambled onto the dock, Trace climbing up right behind her, then they hustled to catch up with the clones.
“What was that about?” Trace asked, keeping his voice low.
“I think it was a test,” Jillian answered.
“What kind of test?” Trace asked
“I think Elizabeth knows that we are more than we seem. Maybe she is trying to figure us out. This could be dangerous, but we can help Ike the most by staying as close to the clones as possible,” Jillian responded
“Where do you think they’re going?” Trace asked.
“My guess is the lab. Why else would they return to Seattle? Maybe they want to learn about themselves. Maybe they want to use the equipment. I’m not sure, but if we stick with them, we’ll find out,” Jillian answered.
They caught up with the clones at the Harbormaster’s office, the man slumped against the door, covered in a blanket, his shivering much diminished, eyes still closed.
Elizabeth hailed a car and they all got in, the clones seemingly unconcerned that Jillian and Trace were still with them. They made room on the benches, but otherwise ignored them, the ride downtown passing in silence.
Along the way, Jillian counted six air-car accidents, fourteen people who fell from buildings to the sidewalks below, several street-car accidents involving cars hitting each other or pedestrians, and one high-rise structure wholly consumed in flames.
Each time another accident came into view, June watched until it passed from sight, but otherwise the clones had no reaction to the mayhem that surrounded them.
When the car dropped them at the entrance to the lab, Jillian couldn’t help but smile at Trace. See, she said with her eyes, I guessed right. Trace acknowledged with a tilt of his head, and then they followed the clones to the lab entrance.
“June, do you know what we should expect inside?” Elizabeth asked.
“Something, or someone, is meddling with the world around us. Perhaps in reaction to our existence.” June paused, thoughtful. “We know we are unique, but we don’t know what has made us this way. I hope to find answers inside the lab.”
Elizabeth seemed satisfied with that explanation. “How should we get in?”
June stood for a moment as if she hadn't heard the question, then with a flick of her right hand, the doors ripped off of their hinges and flew through the air, embedding themselves in the ground hundreds of feet away.
Jillian stared with wide eyes, unable to process what she’d just seen.
“What. Was. That?” Trace mouthed to her.
She had no idea. No idea at all.
Chapter 40
June had become aware of an underlying structure beneath her reality. Where others saw a tree, she saw a logic pattern governing growth as well as the tree’s responses to a limited palette of stimuli. Where others saw a building, she saw a codified description of the structure, including a set of parameters indicating its location in space. Everywhere she looked she saw code, sometimes simple, sometimes complex. Inanimate objects tended to be simple, humans unfathomably complex. She found that even she herself was composed of enormous, interweaving, layers of code.
These discoveries had made her wonder if she could do more than simply observe the code. Perhaps she could make changes? She shied away from the idea of modifying anything too complicated, unsure of what the result would be. But adjusting something simple, that seemed worth trying.
As she stood before the doors to the lab, she pushed her awareness into the door to learn how its code worked. It was more complicated than a wall, because it had the ability to open and close, but it was still pretty simple. She touched the structure of its code, examined the rules that made it behave as a door, and then modified its location parameters to place it somewhere else. A moment later, the door had relocated. To anyone who was watching, the door appeared to fly through the air. But that represented a limitation in how accurately they were able to perceive reality. From her point of view, there was no in-between state. The door was in one location, then it was somewhere else. She could have placed it anywhere she wanted, but she chose to keep it close in case she needed it again. She didn’t like the idea of losing something as important as the lab’s front door.
She turned to Elizabeth. “We should go in now.”
Elizabeth was looking at her with a strange, fixed expression on her face. June thought maybe she looked nervous. June hadn’t realized that was possible. The others in the group seemed mostly surprised, perhaps a bit shocked. Except for Suki. Suki looked excited, like she wanted June to do it again, but this time to blow some stuff up too. Suki was like an exuberant puppy. June thought she was charming.
June’s thoughts were interrupted by a sharp popping noise. It sounded like a firecracker, but it was coming from the sky to the northwest of them. She turned toward the sound to see a para-jet stumbling through the air, thick smoke trailing behind it. Bright flashes emanated from it, followed by more popping noises, then it lost all forward progress and nosed straight down toward the earth, disappearing from view. A moment later it impacted in the midst of the Magnolia neighborhood, sending up a large plume of smoke and fire. A deep rumbling explosion rolled over them several seconds later.
Soon after the para-jet’s explosion had washed past, a man sprinted around the corner, looking over his shoulder as if he was being chased. He nearly made it to the end of the block before he staggered to a halt, clutched his chest, collapsed and lay still, his body lying half in the street, half on the sidewalk.
Without so much as a glance at the prone man, June strode through the front door of the lab, the rest of the group following close behind.
Before they made it to the elevators, a young man ran up to them. “Thank God you’re here,” he said, breathing hard. “The Interim Director died in her office this morning, and we can’t find anyone to tell us what we should be doing. Most of the staff have left the building, but I stayed behind. Somebody has to stay on guard.”
“Guard against what?” June asked, curious.
“I don’t know. But something is going wrong with the world, we can all tell,” the young man said solemnly. “I can’t let the facility fall into the wrong hands.”
June wondered why he was talking to her about this problem. It was as if he thought she could solve for it him. Then she remembered she was in the body of an adult. She was dressed as an officer too. He must have mistaken her for someone with authority. She could use that.
“Take me to the Director’s office, and I’ll see what I can do,” she said, trying to sound like a grown woman.
The guard nodded, standing up straight, gaining confidence now that he had orders to follow. He led them to the elevators, where he keyed in the commands that would take them to the Director’s level. The doors opened, and they all stepped in.
June thought about what they might find in the lab’s data archives. The lab-node
would have a series of security protocols in place, successively stronger for each data-area, increasing in complexity to match the sensitivity of the data that was stored. She had to assume that the information she was looking for, data that explained what made her and the other clones unique, would be stored in the most secure part of the node. There were probably going to be physical security safeguards as well as digital. Gaining access to the Director’s office would make it easier for Elizabeth to break into the node.
As the elevator slowed to a stop, the guard let out a low groan, clutched his head, and dropped to his knees. He stayed in that position for just a moment, his muscles rigid, and then with a strangled sigh, he dropped to the ground. His sightless eyes, red with burst capillaries, were fixed on the ceiling of the elevator.
“That was weird,” Suki said, prodding the body with her foot.
“Very,” Elizabeth agreed.
June had noticed a strange pulse of energy when the young man had died. A tingle that had started in her feet before making its way to the crown of her head. She tentatively reached out to the guard with her awareness, but she couldn’t sense anything interesting. It was just a body, devoid of life or energy. She filed the sensation away as something she should explore later.
The elevator doors opened and they walked onto the command floor. When they reached the Director’s office, they found the Interim Director slumped over her desk. Her head faced the window, blonde hair fanned out over the desktop. Suki pulled her to a sitting position, and wheeled her to the corner where she wouldn’t get in the way.
“Do you think you can access the lab-node from here?” June asked.
Elizabeth pulled a small black device out of one of the desk drawers and nodded. “With this I can.” She brought the device to the Interim Director, and used it to scan her retina, then each fingertip. Elizabeth gave June a tight smile, closed her eyes, and got to work hacking the system to access the information they needed.